Postal Service Touts Efficient Fleets, Alt-Fuel Adoption in Green Update
<p>The agency today released figures showing how rapid expansion of fuel-efficient vehicles and adoption of alternative fuels are driving down costs and emissions in its operations.</p>
The U.S. Postal Service may be losing money hand over fist, but it's working harder than ever to get its environmental and economic costs down.
The agency today released data highlighting the growth of its alternative mail-delivery fleets, which include some impressive figures:
- 44,000 alternative-fuel vehicles, making up 20 percent of its overall delivery fleet
- Replacing 6,600 old vehicles with new, fuel-efficient vehicles that will save 2.2 million gallons of gasoline per year
- Increasing the use of bicycle- and foot-powered delivery routes, which cumulatively save 6.5 million gallons of fuel per year
The Postal Service is embracing alternative fuels in a big way, relying heavily on ethanol, compressed natural gas, liquid propane, biodiesel and electric vehicles to power its trucks. In our most recent State of Green Business report, USPS had the third-largest alt-fuel vehicle fleet, coming in behind Schwan's and Enterprise. (Our research excluded flex-fuel vehicles, which make up a substantial portion of USPS's 44,000 tally, as you can see in the chart below.)
Today's release follows on the June publication of the agency's 2010 sustainability report, which highlights the breadth of the Postal Service's green efforts.
In addition to green vehicles, the Postal Service has been focusing its efforts on building greener post offices, harnessing its employees to uncover further savings, and even consolidating its data centers to boost energy efficiency.
USPS is part of the federal government, which has its own green initiatives that leverage its role as the country's largest buyer of pretty much everything to try shifting manufacturers and suppliers to more efficient and low-carbon practices.
But today's news is also part of a larger strategy to highlight how the agency is working to save money, reduce emissions, maintain jobs and even spur innovation at a time when federal spending in general is in the crosshairs, and the Postal Service in particular is under scrutiny as it lost $3.1 billion in the last fiscal quarter.
